Spirit-Filled Believers

I hope you had a wonderful Memorial Day weekend as we remembered the people who sacrificed their lives for our freedom. In worship, we talked about being filled with the Spirit and prayed for a fresh filling of the Spirit’s power.

Listen here: http://www.mediafire.com/file/mw2l5iuo53n/Spirit Filled Believers.mp3

“Spirit-Filled Believers”
Brimfield Faith UMC / May 30, 2010 / Acts 19:1-7

INTRO – THE ACTS OF THE APOSTLES
Last week we started in the second chapter of Acts as we read about the origins of the church and the outpouring of the Holy Spirit. The book of Acts is one of my favorite books in the Bible because it is a theological history of how this movement called Christianity began. It is filled with stories of tension and drama, miracles and wonders. If you haven’t read the book of Acts, I would implore you with all of my will to go home and read it this week. It is a little longer but you can read it in a couple of hours if you try. It is a book that will forever change your views of God, the Holy Spirit, and the early church.
While the theme is the beginnings of the early church there are two main characters in Acts: the apostle Paul and the Holy Spirit. In the passage that Montana read for us this morning, we see these two characters working together to grow the church and to transform followers into empowered disciples. I want to spend some time looking at this story in Acts 19 this morning, because I think it will help us to understand the Holy Spirit with greater clarity.
The drama begins when Paul arrives in the ancient city of Ephesus with the hopes of starting a Christian church there. When Paul arrives he is pleasantly surprised to find a group of people who consider themselves Jesus followers. As Paul talks with these disciples, he discovers they haven’t heard of the Holy Spirit. They reveal that they have been baptized by John the Baptist but haven’t been baptized in the name of Jesus. The story quickly unfolds as they are first baptized in the name of Jesus. Then, Paul lays hands on them and they are filled with the Holy Spirit which was marked by speaking in tongues and prophesying.
If you look closely at this progression, it is a bit curious. First you have people who were baptized under John, but not Jesus. Then they are baptized in the name of Jesus. And then finally, they receive a filling of the Holy Spirit when Paul lays hands on him. This isn’t the only story in which the filling of the Holy Spirit comes after the initial work of salvation. The Holy Spirit was integral to the movement of the early church because it became the marker by which salvation was confirmed. It also provided the power to proclaim the Good News of Jesus Christ.

THE EXPERIENCES OF THE HOLY SPIRIT
Even with the significance of the Holy Spirit, many of the stories in Acts allude to the fact that there was some confusion in the early days of the movement about the Holy Spirit. It seemed that not every believer of Jesus initially received the Holy Spirit. Nonetheless, to be filled with the Holy Spirit was an important part of being a Christ follower. It is so important that in Acts 19:2, Paul specifically asked, “Did you receive the Holy Spirit when you believed?” There answer is, of course, no, to which Paul basically says, we need to fix that! This morning, I want to pose the same question to each of you. “Have you received the Holy Spirit?”
For the earlier church it was paramount that every believer received a tangible filling of the Holy Spirit. As we have seen there was no exact formula for how and when a believer received the Holy Spirit. I believe there Scripture talks about several unique experiences of the Holy Spirit in the life of the believer. The two that I want to address this morning are mentioned in Acts 19 and further expanded on Paul’s letter back to the Ephesians after he has departed from them. The first experience of the Holy Spirit is a sealing. The second experience of the Holy Spirit is a filling.

#1. The first experience of the Spirit is to be sealed.
Most of us have been taught that we receive the gift of the Holy Spirit when we are baptized, saved and born again. In this we have been taught correctly. My question has always been, what did it really mean to receive the Holy Spirit when I gave my life to Christ? When we are saved from our sins into the eternally loving arms of God, we are marked and sealed by the Holy Spirit. In Ephesians 1:13, Paul explains this initial work of the Holy Spirit, “And you also were included in Christ when you heard the word of truth, the gospel of your salvation. Having believed, you were marked in him with a seal, the promised Holy Spirit, 14 who is a deposit guaranteeing our inheritance until the redemption of those who are God’s possession—to the praise of his glory.”
A seal in biblical times was a mark that signified legal protection. To have the seal of the Roman Emperor was to be a Roman citizen and be under the protection of Rome. In the same way, to have the seal of the Holy Spirit means that we are citizens of heaven and protected by God. Therefore, as we confess our sins and receive Christ into our hearts, the Holy Spirit enters into us and claims us as God’s own. The initial sealing and marking of the Spirit gives us an assurance of salvation. It is the initial heartwarming experience that testifies to our spirit that we are indeed God’s child. When we are marked by the Holy Spirit, we are set apart from the rest of the world. We are special. We are forever God’s. We become a new creation.
I spent some time with Josh, Joe and Austin last week before their baptism talking about the importance of their decisions to be baptized. They all understood that they were publically declaring their decision to trust Jesus for their eternal salvation. We also talked about how we encounter the Holy Spirit when we are baptized. All of them were wearing new dress clothes and ties. I explained to them that one of the reasons we wear new clothes when we are baptized is because they represent the new clothes God gives us in baptism. We proceed to talk about how the Holy Spirit gives us new clothes that mark us as a new creation and as Christ followers. The spiritual clothes we receive from the Holy Spirit are like a sports jersey that allows everyone to know what team the player is on. The initial work of the Holy Spirit is to mark us with new clothes and to let the world know that we are playing for God’s team.

#2. The second and ongoing experience of the Spirit is to be filled.
The mark of the Spirit really is the starting point for the Christian life. Unfortunately, for many Christians their experience of the Spirit stops after they have been marked and sealed. They give their lives to Christ, get saved and are born again and that’s it. Sure they have security in their eternal salvation and even demonstrate the occasional evidence of the Spirit in their lives. The problem is that they get a glimpse of the abundant life but they cannot sustain it in their lives because they haven’t been filled with the Spirit. If Paul were to encounter these Christians today, he would ask them the same question that he asked the Ephesians: “Have you received the Holy Spirit?” In asking this, he wouldn’t be questioning their salvation or whether they had been born again. Instead, he would be asking, Have you been filled with the Holy Spirit? Have you received the power of the Spirit?
Paul asks this question, because he wants people to discover the life that God has for them. In Ephesians 5:1 Paul desires that believers, “Be imitators of God, therefore, as dearly loved children 2 and live a life of love, just as Christ loved us and gave himself up for us as a fragrant offering and sacrifice to God.” Paul suggests the way to do this in verse 18: “Do not get drunk on wine, which leads to debauchery. Instead, be filled with the Spirit. Paul understands that if we are going to discover abundant life and become like God, then we must be filled with the Holy Spirit.
We must be filled with the Holy Spirit, because it is the power of God. The Holy Spirit is the wind and the energy of behind the Christian life. In the Greek the word for power is dunamis. It is where we get the words, dynamite and dynamic. The power of God is something explosive and active. As believers, the second and really ongoing experience of the Spirit is to be filled with the power of God. The primary reason we are filled with the power of the Spirit is to fulfill God’s purpose in our lives.
That purpose is stated in Ephesians 5:1, live a life like God. God desires us for to live without immorality and to live with the fruit of the Spirit: love, joy, peace, patience, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control. The problem is we cannot live into these heavenly riches in our own strength; we need the power of the Spirit. Yet, we are not called into the fruit of the Spirit for simply our own benefit. Instead, as we live the Spirit-filled live, we are called to fulfill the purposes of God in our lives.
This means to proclaim the Good News we are experience and share it with others. After all, we are not filled with the Spirit for simply our own benefit. We are ultimately filled with the power of God for the purpose of bring the Kingdom of God into the earth. Therefore, the filling of the Spirit is evidenced in the fruit of the Spirit not only in our lives but in the lives of the people around us, in our church community, in our wider community. If we are living through the power of the Spirit, we have the ability to impact regions and entire states for the Kingdom of God. Yet, none of this is possible without the filling of the Holy Spirit.

SPIRIT-FILLED
Hopefully, we understand the importance of being filled with the Spirit and what the results look like when we live Spirit-filled lives. In my mind, that leaves a couple of unanswered questions about being filled with the Spirit. How and will I know for sure I’ve been filled? First, in the book of Acts the typically means of filling was to have hands laid and to be prayed for. In Acts 19, Paul lays hands and asks the Holy Spirit to fill the believers. For us today, it would mean a person filled with Spirit laying hands and praying for another person to be filled with the Spirit. We do need to recognize that the stories in Acts do not dictate a strict formula but rather show examples of how people are filled with the Spirit. Therefore, God can fill a person with the Spirit in any way he desires.
Now going back to Acts, the filling of the Spirit was typically followed with the new Spirit-filled believer to speak in tongues and prophesy. I realize that this is outside of our church experience, but I do believe these evidences of the Spirit are still applicable today. In fact, I have had church experiences where these specific signs were evidenced. Without opening that entire can of worms, I will say that there are other ways to know if you have been filled with the Holy Spirit.
In short, when we are initially filled with the Holy Spirit, there will be a tangible experience that will confirm it. It is hard to limit what this confirmation will look and feel like. Like Wesley, you might experience a warming of the heart. Or you might have a spontaneous, unprompted release of emotions: crying, rejoicing. You might hear an internal voice of approval or see spiritual pictures. It is important to note that the confirmation may not be immediate. There possibilities are truly endless, but I believe God wants us to know that we have been filled with the power of the Spirit so that we can learn to live in the power of the Spirit.

CONCLUSION – ARE YOU FILLED?
I realize that I may have created more questions than provided answers this morning. I hope that is the case, because the Spirit-filled life is a life full of unexpected experienced in the divine. My desire is to create a hunger in you for more of God and more of the Holy Spirit. I know each person here longs for more out of life. The key to discovering that it to be filled and continually filled with the power of the Holy Spirit. I want to end this morning with an invitation to receive the Holy Spirit. I want to pray for two groups of people this morning.

The first group is the group that needs to be sealed with the Spirit. If you haven’t been born again, that is born of the Spirit, then I want to give you the opportunity to be marked and sealed by the Holy Spirit. Let’s pray for that group and then I’ll address the second group.

The second group is the group that desires to be filled with Spirit. I want to lay hands on people and pray for a filling of the Spirit. During the last hymn, you will be invited to come forward and receive pray to be filled with the Spirit.